The successful Think German campaign launched in 2010 involving the German, Austrian and Swiss Embassies, German Academic Exchange Service, Goethe Institut, German Departments across the UK and others has now come to an end.

A new initiative has developed out of it: Think German locally. The Oxford German Network – the first university-led cultural network of its kind – is recommended as a best practice model. Please get in touch if you are interested in developing a local German hub: ogn@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

The Oxford German Network chose the European Day of Languages as its launch date. Committed to promoting language learning in younger age groups and providing incentives to take learning beyond the framework of exams, it facilitates personal contact between individuals and opens up pleasurable opportunities for communicating with others in their language.

European language degree courses abandoned by many UK universities
The Guardian, 08/10/2013, pp.1-2, Anna Bawden
More than a third of UK universities have given up offering specialist modern European language degrees over the past 15 years, according to a Guardian survey, with leading academics arguing that harsh marking at A-level is putting teenagers off studying the subject at school. Since 1998, the number of universities offering French, German, Italian and Spanish as single honours degrees or jointly with another language has plunged by 40% and the rate of decline has increased in recent years. The number of universities offering degrees in the worst affected subject, German, has halved over the past 15 years.

Language grades translate into poor results
The Guardian, 08/10/2013, p.37
Professor Katrin Kohl, vice-chair of modern languages at Oxford University, and nearly 80 signatories have published a letter criticising the ‘unfair grading’ of school language exams: ‘It is well-known that the UK is losing out culturally and economically because of inadequate foreign language skills among English native speakers. This problem has been significantly exacerbated by the fact that pupils choosing modern languages have not been rewarded adequately for excellent performance ... ’